


Subtle Fire

by sister_coyote



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alchemy, Intellectual Kink, M/M, New Relationship, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-01
Updated: 2008-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:53:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had the sense of standing on a precipice, looking down on something he didn't understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subtle Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orion117](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=orion117).



The concrete wall scratched at Ed's back through the material of his shirt as he counted the chimeras. One, two, three . . . five, seven . . . damn. Nine. He was getting used to fighting off monsters (and wasn't that a sad indictment of his life?), but nine chimeras was still going to be a lot for him.

A least none of the research indicated that this particular fuckwit of an alchemist had used humans in his beasts. Probably for lack of ability rather than lack of desire, but still. At least this way, if he had to kill them to get out, he wouldn't wind up sick with guilt over it . . . .

The group wasn't all the same species, and didn't have the intelligence for planning, but still it was obvious that one of them had made himself leader, probably through sheer physical strength, down here in the oubliette. It—he? she?—looked as though it had been made part bear and part snake, with a massive, scarred black-furred body giving way to a long slim scaly head, a long whip of a tail. The eyes that watched Ed were reptile-cold, the teeth in the beast's mouth needle fangs, but it also had paws as big as hams with blunt claws. Probably being clobbered by it would be like getting a punch in the mouth from Major Armstrong . . . no thank you. And that was assuming it wasn't venomous.

The creature arched its long neck and tilted its head from one side to the other, hissing and tasting the air. The other chimeras stayed back, as though waiting for some sign from this mutant pack leader. A thrill of hope surged through Ed; if the thing waited long enough, he could get _out_ of here and figure out what to do about nine deadly and highly illegal chimeras when they weren't eyeing him up like the only meal they'd had in a week. (Which was probably not far off from true. The Thorn Root Alchemist didn't seem the type to lavish tender loving care on his pet monsters . . . )

Slow, achingly slow, so as not to startle the pack leader, Ed brought his palms together in front of him, his mind spinning the array he needed: altering the smooth cement wall of the oubliette into a series of stepping-stones so he could climb out. Slow enough to make him grind his teeth in frustration he pressed his palms to the wall to complete the array—

But the flash of blue-white light that accompanied alchemy made the pack leader rear up in terror and then lunge, and he had to duck sideways—away from the wall—to avoid being crushed. The bear-snake-thing's shoulder crushed the thin stone shell of his ladder. _Damn_! It reared its head back and struck. Ed rolled out of its way - and again - and _again_, and god, if he hadn't spent his adolescence sparring against someone with supernatural reflexes who felt no pain, he'd've been in deep shit—

No time for a complex transmutation, but he could press his palms together and feel the crackle of energy as his wrist extended into a blade over the back of his hand.

The snake-bear lunged, and he waited until the last possible second before rolling sideways, so that he could come up fast and drive the point of his automail-blade into the base of the thing's long neck, severing trachea and arteries.

One down. Eight to go.

_Why_ _does_ _this_ _always_ _happen_ _to_ me?

(Not that he had to think back very far for the answer to that one.)

* * *

Four days earlier, pacing around the apartment, Ed had said, "It could be for . . . medical research. Or academic analysis. Or maybe he just wants a menagerie—" Not because he was naive enough to disbelieve that _yet_ _another_ state alchemist had started research on illegal chimeras, but because he wanted, at _least_ once, to find out that an alchemist wasn't secretly a nutjob with a god complex and too little empathy.

Al had looked up, sadly, from the pile of papers scattered around the living room. (They didn't have a library or a study proper, but that didn't matter when the entire living room served as a study, when the whole floor served as a desk, hosting piles of books and notes, jars of pens.) "But then why the secrecy? Why ship the animals in on the black market for twice the price? If it was above-board research, he could just requisition the animals through the government."

"You're right." Ed slammed his fist into his palm, the slight bruise-knuckle sting of flesh on steel grounding him. "—What is it about chimeras? It's like every other damn alchemist wakes up one morning with the desire to make a rat-hyena-peacock hybrid. I don't _get_ it. He wasn't even doing research on animals, he was a _plant_ alchemist—"

"We should tell the Brigadier General," Al said. "He has the resources to—"

"No." Ed crouched and riffled through another pile of papers. "No, see, he's bought another house—I guarantee he knows someone's on to him, he'll destroy the evidence and get away free unless we do something now. Tonight. We don't have time for Mustang's bureaucracy." Also, unlike Mustang, they could operate freely with fewer political complications. As a child, he had been disdainful at best of Mustang's 'political complications;' as an adult, he understood them better, grudgingly accepted the necessity of delicate maneuvering for long-term goals—but that didn't mean he had to _like_ it. Or work that way himself.

Al sighed, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and then—as Ed had known he would—said, "I'm in. But where do we search? There's the lab, his townhouse, and the estate outside the city. It could be in any of those places."

"Not the lab. That's too close to the government's eye." Ed resumed pacing, hands behind his back and mind whirling. "So either the townhouse or the estate. But if we search one first, he'll _know_ we're onto him, and if we're wrong there's no way the evidence will still be there when we get to the other—"

"Split up?"

"I don't see any way around it. You take the townhouse, I'll go to the estate, and whoever doesn't find anything will join the other."

* * *

Just six left now, but apparently the big bear-snake-whatsit was alpha for strength, not smarts, because _fucking_ _hell_, the remainder were the clever ones, hanging back to watch Ed's moves and attacking as a pack in a more calculating manner. He'd lost half his left pantleg to a scorpion whip-tail, and it was just good luck that the extravagant barb on the end had clattered uselessly against steel rather than sinking into flesh. Now two badger-cats harried him from one side while a bizarre amalgam-creature that was part bird and part . . . something-or-other struck at him while he was distracted, and it was only by moving _fast_ that he avoided being torn to bits between the three of them. But moving fast didn't give him much chance for long-term planning, let alone a way to get out of the situation—fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

He ducked-and-rolled under one of the cat-badgers, bringing his blade-arm up sharply as he rolled clear to hamstring it—but it moved too fast, and he had to feint backwards and struggle not to stumble. _C'mon_, _Al_, _where_—

Flash of red-orange light; breath of charred air. His first thought was _Oh_ _fuck_ _now_ _what_? but the next thing he smelled was the godawful stench of burning feathers and he turned in time to see the bird-thing writhe in flames and thought, _Mustang_—

The chimera backed away from the flame, which gave him enough time to spin on his heel and look around the—ahh. At the top of the pit, white shirt and white gloves vivid in the ruddy firelight, the Brigadier General, as showy as he always was with glove raised and eye fixed hard and bright. He couldn't even spare the time to wonder why Mustang was here; he just shouted, "Transmute something so I can get out—I can't—" before the cat-badgers lost their fear and leapt, and he was too distracted to do it himself.

Of course, Mustang had to draw the array by hand, which left him a good couple of minutes of trying not to get bitten in half. At the end of which—

—stairs! A set of transmuted concrete stairs, and in that moment he could have _kissed_ Roy (ooh, dangerous thought), whatever the fuck he was doing here. He leapt for the stairs, lunged up them, reached the top—and then felt the hot fetid breath on the back of his thigh and whirled with "Damn it why couldn't you have made a ladder they couldn't climb ladders—" as two of the chimeras scrambled up after him. The one at the fore gathered itself to leap, and he put up his right arm to block—

—and then felt himself dragged off-balance as Mustang grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him back out of harm's way—and the snarling chimera stumbled, deprived of its target, and then half-stepped and lunged again and caught Mustang hard in the leg. The noise Mustang made wasn't quite a scream, but it was a close cousin, grit-teethed and choked. Ed brought the blade edge of his arm down on the chimera's neck, hard, severing its spine at a blow, and then kicked up with an automail foot at the one just behind it, knocking it back into the pit, and said, "Snap, you idiot, _snap_, unless you want to fight the _rest_ of them!"

Mustang looked pale and greenish, but he raised his hand and snapped, and fire scythed down into the pit.

"What the fuck were you—" Ed began, assessing the bite on Roy's thigh. It was large, ragged, but not too deep—didn't look like an artery had been hit—but he still didn't like the look of it "—and why the fuck are you even _here_—"

"I liked our odds better with backup," said Al from the doorway, and Ed found that he wasn't surprised to see Lieutenant Colonel Hawkeye by his side, "so I called the Lieutenant Colonel, and she—but that doesn't matter, is he—"

"I don't think it's bad, but he needs medical attention," Ed said, and then stepped back and let the ever-efficient Lieutenant Colonel take over.

* * *

It wasn't a bad bite. He'd had to have it cleaned, of course, who knew what kind of bacteria flourished between the teeth of a half-starved chimera trapped in a pit for its short miserable life, but the doctors said that the wound was mostly superficial, just torn skin and flesh, and with appropriate care would heal up fast and clean.

Still, it unsettled Ed to see Mustang flat on his back and looking sallow-pale with shock and blood loss, so he let himself be a little caustic. "What the hell, Mustang?"

Mustang's eyes snapped open. "Excuse me," he said, sharp and acid, "for not wanting to stand there and watch it _eat_ you, you idiot."

Ed stared at him a moment, then began rolling his right sleeve up, stripping off his glove as he went. He flexed his fingers, the automail joints clicking delicately. "Unlike you, I'm part metal. He could bite me all day an'—"

"_Excuse_ me," Mustang said again, and Ed looked up sharply, because that sounded like bona fide anger, not just sarcasm. "Excuse me for trying to be helpful, excuse me for providing assistance in a way you deemed unnecessary, excuse me for caring whether you got a chunk taken out of me and especially excuse me for damaging your _pride_—" He was—he was actually _mad_, not self-assured and calm, and anger had sent blood into his bloodless cheeks. Even though Ed purely hated being yelled at, it was better than Mustang looking weary and worn and ill.

"Where was this protective streak when I was eleven?" he asked, but without heat.

"Do you think I enjoyed sending a child into harm's way? It was the only way for either of us to pursue our goals, and it would have been—it would have been crueler to prevent you, but never claim I liked it." His eye had narrowed, bright and fierce and still angry.

"I'm not a child anymore," Ed said, watching carefully, watching the weird compelling _rare_ pillar of Roy's—Mustang's—anger, that telltale sign that he really meant something.

"No. You're not." Something about the look in his good eye chased a tremor down Ed's spine. "But that doesn't mean you need to shoulder everything alone."

Ed chewed the inside of his cheek. He had the sense of standing on a precipice, looking down on something he didn't understand. So he backed off. "I'm not alone," he said. "There's Al."

Roy's eye closed. "Yes," he agreed. "There is Al."

* * *

"I found something interesting," Al said a week and a half later, surrounded again by papers in the middle of the living room. "In the Thorn Root alchemist's papers. He's using a unique method of making chimeras."

"A clumsy, grotesque—"

"But unique. Brother, look." Al turned the array around so it was right-side-up to Ed. "He's using symbols for fire prominently, here and here and here, and, look, six total. I've never seen this many fire symbols in biological alchemy. And they're all bounded by earth." He looked up meaningfully at Ed. Well, of course; he knew as well as Ed what that meant.

Ed quoted aloud from the Turba Philosophorum. "' . . . fire is tenuous and light, and it rules all things on earth, but the earth, being ponderous and gross, sustains all things which are ruled by fire.' I didn't expect _that_, the concept of subtle fire is hasn't been in general use in biological alchemy for, fuck, a couple centuries."

"He's using it in some way to do with keeping the animal's—spirit? life?—intact while modifying its flesh. Which means . . . "

Ed felt his eyes go wide. "Which means if you could keep the animal alive for a merge that way, you could potentially also keep it alive when splitting a chimera back into its component creatures."

"Exactly," Al said. "But we'd need to know more about this, this subtle fire."

Ed grabbed the sheaf of papers and grinned. "Leave that to me."

* * *

"I need you to tell me about fire," Ed said, under Roy's bemused gaze. The papers cut at the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, and he shifted his weight.

Mustang's eyebrow went up. "Why, hello, Edward. I'm doing much better, than you for asking."

"—Jerk. I can see that. Can I come in?"

Mustang stepped to one side with an extravagant be-my-guest gesture and then followed Ed in. He was limping, Ed could see, but not badly. "Al found something in the arrays—something to do with subtle fire, you know the concept?"

Mustang's mouth ghosted a smile. "I know the concept."

"—which I had thought was a load of archaic shit, but apparently it works. You can make it work. And if you can make it work to merge animals, I thought, maybe you could make it work to unmerge them."

"Let's see the array, then," Mustang said softly.

* * *

Alchemy was—alchemy just _was_, the world seemed so uncomplicated when Ed was considering an array. He always saw it first in his mind, as a network of light behind his eyes; sometimes it seemed like the whole world was a matrix for arrays, everything definable and defined by their precise and beautiful lines and symbols.

Drawing them for the benefit of someone else slowed him _down_, and that was frustrating, but drawing them and then having someone take your ideas and tweak them and bounce them back was always good.

"This symbol," Roy said, tapping the threefold snake winding around the earth-bounded flame at the center of the array. "I don't know it."

"The three serpents." Ed scratched the back of his neck, and realized too late that he had his pen in his hand. He rubbed his nape and glared at the inkspots on his gloved fingertips. "The red one's blood, the white one's breath, and the green one's bile. But I think that's a red herring, it's not got any basis at anything. Tell me what this is." He tapped an inkstained fingertip to a shape that looked like a small mound.

"Ashes," Mustang—Roy?—said. "The low stage of the Phoenix. Which makes sense if you want to keep life in abeyance but not extinguished for this part of the transmutation."

"Right."

They ate delivered sandwiches for dinner, the array pushed to one side to keep it clear of mustard (though Ed couldn't help but crane his neck to try to keep studying it anyway). He did manage a little in the way of normal social interactions, though. "So," he said, feeling—nervous? why nervous?—as he brushed crumbs from his fingertips, "how _is_ the leg?"

"Much better, actually," Roy said. "It hurts if I try to walk far, but it's healing up cleanly. Probably won't even scar, or not much."

Ed snorted. "You would care about that. Vain bastard." But still—still he realized that he was glad, knew that it mattered to Roy that he'd lost an eye —

"I just think if I get any more patchworked I'll look like a chimera myself," Roy said lightly.

Ed looked at him, half his face hidden by an eyepatch, smile a little wry, and wondered: how far down do the scars go? And the felt himself flush hot from throat to belly for wondering. He cleared his throat. "So," he said, "the array . . . ."

Al had been right. Subtle fire, bounded by earth. "It's a metaphor," Roy said, "for life, but also for purification. But—"

"Cellular respiration is a kind of combustion, isn't it?"

"Mmm."

"I wonder if." Ed felt a thrill of excitement, looked up suddenly and was struck hard by the way Roy looked when he was _focused_, not playing but concentrating on something, had to swallow against a suddenly-dry throat, "I wonder if that's what it is, the fire of cellular metabolism, a reflection of life."

"Could be," Roy said, spanning his hand over the paper. "It would explain the fire here, and here," and then he fell silent, studying.

Bent so close over the array Ed could almost feel the warmth of Roy's skin against his and he felt, god, _giddy_, too-warm, itchy like he'd go mad if he didn't move, didn't do _something_.

The something he did was ask, very quietly, "Why did you let the chimera bite you instead of me?"

Roy lifted his head slowly, gaze shifting focus from the array to Ed's face. For a long moment he didn't say anything, and Ed felt a great chasm of fear open up in his stomach, and tried to summon enough anger to mask it, and failed. Then Roy wet his lips—quick dart of his tongue, oh god, oh _god_—and said, just as quietly, "Why were you so mad that I did?"

There was no response adequate except to see Roy's mouth so close, his eyes so close, his skin so close he scorched like a fire, and it was impossible and it was inevitable that he should close that short distance. It wasn't the first time he'd kissed someone, but it wasn't that far off, either, and the angle was wrong and at first it was almost chaste, a tilted sideways slant of dry lips on dry lips and for a moment Roy didn't move and Ed was frozen.

And then Roy made a noise, muffled and half-desperate and he moved, changing the angle somehow so that Ed's mouth fell open naturally and there was Roy's tongue, oh god, tasting his, coaxing it inward —

_here_ _here_ _here_ _yes_ _yes_ _yes_ . . .

"As good an answer as any," Roy said against his mouth, his breath tickling, and Ed laughed and slapped his chest and breathed, "bastard."

"I find," Roy went on, "that I don't so much want to rescue you—I know that would irritate you, you don't have to hit me, truly—as that I want to make things right for you. I wish I could make the world so that you never had to find these things and root them out. You should have—"

There wasn't anything to say to that, was there, and no wonder Roy had so much success with women if this was the kind of thing he could come up with off the cuff. "I should have the same world everyone else does," he said, "don't idealize me, fuck."

"Mmm. But I wish—"

"You want to do something for me," Ed said, feeling weightless, effervescent, full of light and air even despite the heavy metal of his limbs, "shut up and kiss me again."

Kissing, kissing, touching, and maybe it was fast, maybe it was _too_ fast, maybe it didn't make any sense at all but soon they were on the couch together and he was pressing Roy back against the arm of the couch, too eager to let himself be led, too eager to wait. Roy went without complaint, kissed him, kissed him, skillful with tongue and teeth but not in a way that made Ed feel bad about his own relative clumsiness. It was more—that he led, and made it easy for Ed to follow. (Like dancing. Not that Ed would ever let him lead in _dancing_, god, his head would swell up and explode—)

And between kisses he said ridiculous things. "Subtle fire," he said, "you're full of it, Ed, full of _life_, if I could bottle it and sell it I'd make a mint."

"Selfish," Ed said, nipping his lower lip and daring to slide his hands up under his shirt, feeling the muscles of his stomach, the smooth skin jumping beneath his fingertips.

"Yes," Roy breathed, "I'm a selfish bastard, I could write an array on your skin, to make your fire visible," Roy said, reciprocating by rucking Ed's shirt up, getting it off over his head, "and then lick the light off every inch of you," and Ed couldn't help it, the idea made turn him on, embarrassingly, so that he ground a little against Roy's thigh and moaned, helpless, and kissed him hard. Roy tugged off his gloves, one at a time, so careful . . . .

There was not time or patience to take it slow, or the—equipment (lube, condoms, he was inexperienced but he wasn't naive)—for some of the things that were possible (and he flushed to think of it and hated himself a little for flushing) but that was okay, it was okay, they shed clothes awkwardly half-pinned to the couch but managed anyway, and anyway it was perfect. Ed wrapped mismatched hands around Roy's hipbones and slid hesitantly; Roy arched so that their cocks touched for the first time, a long slide that made them both groan, and then cupped Ed's ass and coaxed him to move together and at the same time tipped his head for another kiss. Another. Another.

He should have been embarrassed at the noise he was making, a long thin moan broken up only by his breaths as he thrust and thrust and felt the slide of his erection against Roy's, against Roy's skin, dug his fingers into Roy's hips and just _writhed_ at the feeling of heat skin muscles hands mouth teeth tongue—

The spark lit in his tailbone and _snapped_ up his spine, and he felt ablaze, shining, alight with fire, jerking and spilling and ecstatic, too lost to even wonder if it was all right as his body worked over Roy's. And Roy said, "Oh god," thin and choked, dug his fingers into the small of Ed's back and went wild for a moment. He stiffened and Ed, lying boneless against him, felt the throb, the rush of heat and wet against his own stomach.

Then it was over, and he didn't know what to say but was too utterly relaxed to move. It felt . . . indelicate, as sweat cooled and their bodies grew sticky, but Roy made no sign of wanting to move, rested a hand in Ed's hair, sighed.

"Now what?" Ed asked, after a while, when the silence became too much.

"Now," Roy said, "now, whatever you want."

* * *

He came home with the array in his hands the next day, to find Al at the breakfast table, drinking orange juice and giving him a _look_. The look that said, 'I know you, Brother, don't even try lying to me.'

"Uh," he said, and put the array down on the table, the one he and Roy had figured out over breakfast. "It needs testing, but I think we've worked it out."

"About damn time," Al said. "Have some coffee."


End file.
